08/04/2014

Toledo water crisis: A game changer for the Great Lakes and global algae research

One thing I keep hearing from sources while covering Toledo's algae-induced water crisis is this: It's a game changer.

It has instantly made the environment a key issue of the 2014 gubernatorial race between Republican incumbent John Kasich and his Democratic challenger, Ed Fitzgerald.

It will, no doubt, amplify the debate over whether the future of Lake Erie should be reconsidered by a conservative majority in the Ohio General Assembly which, to date, has been bending over backward to keep strict regulations from being imposed on the agricultural industry.

Such regulations may be difficult to enforce, but more people affected by algae and calling for more effective ways to control farm runoff now, as opposed to relying on another set of voluntary incentives.

Or, as Toledo Councilman Larry Sykes said, how people trying to scrape together a living working at them - dishwashers and busboys, for example - react.

Last fall's temporary closure of Ottawa County's Carroll Township water treatment plant was one thing.

It serves 2,000 residents, most of them financially stable.

Now, the crisis shifts to Toledo, which only a few years ago was ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau as America's 8th most-impoverished city with one of every four residents in the city limits living below the poverty line.

Conventional wisdom was that the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant - despite being built in 1941 and only recently getting some of its creaks addressed, such as a new roof - was too large and too sophisticated for algae to pass through it.

No longer will eyes roll when someone suggests a metro area of 500,000 people in the world's most water-blessed region could suddenly find themselves scrambling for fresh drinking water because of pollution.

The unthinkable has happened.

If you want to wade deep into this algae issue, go to the second link down on this page and call up an 80-page powerpoint presented to farmers on July 22 by Jeff Reutter, Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director.

Not to get overly dramatic, but there are parallels to be made to Toledo's water crisis, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The latter two, obviously, are much more dramatic. Lives were lost or, at a minimum, upended far worse than they will be from the Toledo area's temporary disruption of safe drinking water.

But this event's a game changer for the often-overlooked Great Lakes region on a smaller scale.

It not only proved the unthinkable can happen. But it also serves as a stiff wake-up call about the hidden costs of pollution and how our lives are fundamentally connected to water.

"Maybe rattling the cage is a good thing," Bill Strable, superintendent of pumping stations at Toledo's Collins Park Water Treatment Plant told me. "You don't realize how much we rely on water until you don't have it."

The thing is, the threat from toxic microcystis algae and its chief toxin, microcystin, is hardly new.

It has appeared almost annually ever summer since 1995, following a 20-year disappearance.

I still remember getting out on a boat and seeing it in the summer of 1995 with former Ohio State University limnologist (a fancy word for lake scientist) David Culver.

Coverage of each subsequent bloom has been almost like an annual rite of summer for me, with dire warnings put out for people who largely ignored them or made fun of them.

In the early days, before people took the algae more seriously, my stories got picked up by radio shock jocks who poked fun at the thought of a killer algae with glee.

They did so even though the stuff was deadly enough that it killed 75 people in a kidney dialysis center in Brazil in 1995, when an on-site water treatment system there failed and raw water contaminated with algae killed off those patients.

That event that triggered a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research project headed by another Ohio algae researcher, Wayne Carmichael of Wright State University.

A satellite image of 2011's record algae bloom. Image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Culver and Carmichael testified before Congress years ago about how this toxic algae endangers the Great Lakes, which holds 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water.

It's not a problem limited to the Great Lakes, either. In China, Carmichael researched how algae fouls so much water that access to drinking water has become a potentially volatile national security issue.

The problem is exacerbated by global climate change.

Many people either never knew that or forgot about regional, national, and global algae problems.

I have to confess I'm starting to appreciate more what one of my buddies from the Society of Environmental Journalists (www.sej.org) went through after Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.

In his groundbreaking 2003 series, "Washing Away," Mark Schleifstein, a two-time Pulitzer winner and bestselling author, predicted in eerie detail what could happen to New Orleans if the levees failed.

To Mark - one of the nation's best environmental writers - the story was not just about climate change but more so about accountability and the failure of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build levees as robust as New Orleans needed.

He has described the internal debate over his 2003 series at various conferences and speaking engagements, saying how one senior editor tried to stop it because he viewed it as "just more of Scheifstein's disaster porn."

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Thank you Tom. Please use your bully pulpit, along with the powers that be at The Blade, to hold all those with a role in causing and fixing the environmental mess that occurred in our community over the past few days. Especially those in our government at all levels who need to take the actions necessary to make our community, and all other communities drawing their drinking water and making their livings from the Great Lakes, safe from the potentially disastrous effects of the toxic algae and other environment harm, such as Asian carp. If ever there was a time to push hard to request, and achieve, long term remedies to the real potential harm of real water pollution threats, it is now. Let us dedicate ourselves to not missing this clear and important window of opportunity, or the next serious threat to Toledo, or another community on the Great Lakes may result in real human disaster with real human casualties that cannot be reversed. Those of us know what it felt like this past weekend, not knowing what would happen next tour precious water supply, that so many of us previously just took for granted. We have been warned.

I've been following the water crisis from afar via the Blade. I've been struck by the lack of any meaningful response from your Governor or conservative legislative leaders to this crisis. The Blade's lead columnist, Mr. Burris, writes that there are no bad guys in this story and today deflects attention from the Governor and Legislature by asking how the Mayor of Toledo, of all people, is handling the crisis. How the Mayor, who has no power to affect conditions in Lake Erie, is handling the crisis is irrelevant. Where has the Governor been ? Where has the Legislature been? And then of course there is the U.S. House insisting on cutting funds from the Clean Water Act. Perhaps, like global warming, the threat of algae in Lake Erie is a liberal hoax. The water is fine, I'm sure.

Post a comment

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Name is required to post a comment

Please enter a valid email address

Invalid URL

Please enable JavaScript if you would like to comment on this blog.

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." - Henry David Thoreau

About Ripple Effect

Every pollution battle ultimately comes down to mankind's desire to better itself while protecting its sense of home. In this blog, Blade Staff Writer Tom Henry looks at how Great Lakes energy-environmental issues have a ripple effect on our public health, our natural resources, our economy, our psychological well-being, and our homespun pride.

About Tom Henry

Tom Henry is an award-winning journalist who has covered primarily energy and environmental issues the past two decades. He is a member of the national Society of Environmental Journalists, one of North America's largest journalism groups.